CHILD ABUSE The manchild is the most helpless compared to the little ones of all other species. To begin with, it has to depend for all its needs, locomotion, food, protection, etc., on others. Later, its thinking mind further complicates affairs. Unlike animals, whose sole purpose in life is survival, the child learns the necessity of satisfying many people. First it is the mother than the father too, then the school-teacher and later, friends, boyfriend /girlfriend, wife/ husband and the society in general, if it is to have a successful life. Sometimes it gets confused regarding the criteria for this satisfaction, because those in authority, or superior to it in the use of their faculties, i.e. the elders impress upon it a criteria that is not correct. In the west the criteria or sense of values, to which much importance was given previously, have declined. Honour piety, family ties, in fact all abstract values have today acquire a new meaning. Today they have all been, in varying degrees been sacrificed to the god of progress. With the U.S having made homosexuality and lesbianism legal and sex being accepted as the correct behaviour, the fabric of values is bound to be torn to shreds. Compassion and kindness, are some of the other values, that have been so sacrificed. Child abuse is the result of the general ineffectiveness of our value system. Its incidences are on the rise every year. In Ontario, Canada alone, 933 cases have been reported in 1988, as compared to 286 cases in 1980. In Quebec, there were 27940 case reported in 1988, as against 17145 cases in 1981-1982. There is a possibility that actually the cases of abuse are higher than reported. Obv...
